Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for six years, is suing Ecuador for "violating his fundamental rights and freedoms" by imposing new rules regarding his use of the Internet, political activity, bathroom hygiene and care of his cat, according to media reports.

Baltasar Garzon, the lawyer for Wikileaks, the whistleblower website that Assange founded, has arrived in Ecuador to pursue the case, which is expected to be heard in a domestic court next week, Sky News reports.

Wikileaks charges that Assange's access to the outside world has been "summarily cut off" by a clampdown on his activities. The suit will also claim that Ecuador has threatened to remove the protection he has enjoyed since receiving political asylum, according to Sky News.

Assange, 47, first took refuge in the embassy in London in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning regarding rape allegations. Although the investigation was dropped last year, Assange still faces a charge in Britain for skipping bail.

Assange, an Australian, has also chosen to stay put out of concern that the United States would immediately seek his arrest and extradition over the leaking of classified documents to WikiLeaks by then-U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning.

WikiLeaks is also the focus of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections by distributing hacked materials.

In March, Ecuador barred Assange from using the Internet for violating an agreement he signed at the end of 2017 not to use his communiques to interfere in the affairs of other states.

Ecuador toughened its stance following the election in May of President Lenin Moreno, who has described Assange as a “hacker,” an “inherited problem” and a “stone in the shoe.”

Assange, an Australian computer programmer, particularly drew the ire of Ecuador by angering the Spanish government with his support for separatist leaders in Spain's Catalonia region who sought to secede last year.

The new rules, appearing in a 9-page memo in Spanish obtained by the Ecuador website Codigo Vidrio, require him to refrain from activities “that could prejudice Ecuador’s good relations with other states,” The Independent reports.

Ecuador also insists that he clean the bathroom in his embassy lair and take better care of his cat, who has a Twitter account, EmbassyCat. The cat, also cut off from the Internet, has not posted on Twitter or Instagram since last October.

Assange told CNN in 2012 that he lived in a single room with a frosted-glass window while the business of the diplomatic mission went on around him.

"It's a little like living in a space station, because there's no natural light and you've got to make all your own stuff. You can't go out to shops and so on," Assange told CNN four months after taking refuge. "But I have been in solitary confinement. I know what life is like for prisoners. It's a lot better than it is for prisoners."

The Ecuadorian government recently tried to resolve the thorny issue by granting Assange citizenship and declaring him a diplomat in order to give him immunity to go to Moscow, Bloomberg reported this week. That fell through, however, when Britain failed to accept his diplomatic designation, suggesting that it would not honor any diplomatic immunity if he left the embassy.